Snapchat CEO: 70% of Users Are Women

Logo seen at the front entrance to the headquarters of Snapchat, the popular social network startup that lets users send each other photos that quickly disappear. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

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Roughly 70% of Snapchat users are women, the chief executive of the messaging app said at a closed-door Goldman Sachs conference Wednesday.

Co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said Snapchat users are sending 400 million “snaps” a day on the service, where messages disappear after a few seconds, according to a person who was present at the meeting. He said half of Snapchat’s users have tried out “stories,” a feature the company introduced last month to link multiple messages together.

Snapchat has not disclosed its number of users. Spiegel was asked about user numbers Wednesday but declined to discuss them.

Snapchat has no revenue, and Spiegel said the company is in no hurry to make money from advertisers. “There are a lot of things in our product that make it appealing for advertisers, but we want to do it right,” Spiegel told a packed room at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, according to the person who was present.

Mary Ritti, a spokeswoman for Snapchat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Spiegel said Snapchat’s biggest competitors are rival messaging apps. WeChat and Line are popular in their home markets of China and Japan, respectively, but “there are no real huge players worldwide,” he said.

To expand overseas, Snapchat is relying on users to translate its app into new languages – a low-cost strategy that’s worked for other Internet services such as Facebook and Pinterest. The company plans to add to its current team of 30 employees, Spiegel said.